Formers are employed to receive bag material in strip form, and reconfigure the strip into tubular bag material for delivery to a packaging machine. Product is delivered to the interior of the tube with the packaging machine then forming transverse seals and transversely cutting the bag material to form bags of product. As a particular example, the product may be a snack food such as a potato crisps.
Traditionally, such as bags of snack foods have been packaged in boxes for delivery to points of sale. More recently the size of the bags has been increasing. This has necessitated the use of larger formers since wider strip bag material is being used so that the tubular bag material is larger in diameter. Large bags are also employed to receive a number of smaller bags.
Formers need to be removed from their mounting adjacent the packaging machine for various reasons, including servicing of the former as well as changing the former so that different sized bags can be manufactured.
Formers are relatively heavy and are mounted in awkward positions. Accordingly the removal and replacement of formers presents a problem.
A former assembly includes a mounting plate to which there is attached a metal sheet that provides the former surface over which the strip bag material passes to be reconfigured into a tubular configuration. The former surface converges upwardly to an upper opening through which there projects a product tube, via which product is delivered to the interior of the bag material.
A disadvantage of the above discussed former assemblies is that the former assemblies are particularly heavy and therefore difficult to manage.